Belarus: More Soviet than the Russians
In Kiev, there was a lot of money … there were a lot of business people in Ukraine who were dissatisfied with the state of government there, and invested a lot of money into changing the situation … whereas the opposition here have got a little sound system, which isn’t very loud, a few flags, and about a dozen or so pretty rickety tents. … Revolutions cost money.
Andrew Miller on Open Source
Click to Listen to the Show (24 MB MP3)
(I only learnt yesterday that it was “the jeans revolution”.)
(and very few of us have jeans)
Unidentified Belarusian, in an IM conversation with The Filter
Minsk is not Kiev. Ukraine arrived at its orange revolution with a multiparty parliament, an independent news channel, a bloc of non-state business owners, civic groups to create tent cities and local chapters of international organizations. Belarus has none of these.
What it does have is a culture and state apparatus that’s more Soviet than Russia. It kept its KGB and didn’t bother to change the name. President Alexander Lukashenko wears a Politburo-style mustache and combover; he has his own TV show for a half-hour every night, speaking in front of pictures of a blue tractor and a Russian Orthodox icon. Politically, Belarus is, more than anything, his. Party affiliation is unimportant — there is only Lukashenko — and no one in the country knows the name of the prime minister, who doesn’t matter.
Lukashenko runs a command economy without an ism; the ism is him. He introduced a reform that puts every citizen up for contract review every year, giving notice, essentially, that employment is conditional on good behavior. Belarus boasts a higher GDP per capita than the Ukraine, but a climate so hostile to independent business that Professor Ron Holt, in Belarus for a year on a Fulbright, told us this afternoon that people have left the cities to farm a subsistence from their own small plots of land.
So perhaps the US blogger Robert Mayer was a little too hasty when he wrote yesterday — under a picture of an apple-cheeked brunette waving a flag in the snow — Protest Babe Alert: The government is doomed.
So what is actually happening in Minsk? And where is Russia in all of this? Putin has played an antagonistic role with Ukraine in the last year, sending signals by cutting off the supply of natural gas, but his relationship — and Russia’s — with Belarus is more complicated. Lukashenko positions himself as an anti-nationalist keeping peace with his neighbors. Russia still can’t get used to its post-imperial future, and has made clear that the line it drew around the former Soviet Union is for NATO and the European Union inviolable. And among the crowd in Minsk, of course, are not only the banned red-and-white of Belarus, but the twelve stars on a blue field of the European Union.
What now?
David Marples
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Professor of History, University of Alberta
Author, Belarus: From Soviet Rule to Nuclear Catastrophe and The Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1985-1991
Vlad
- Blogger, Br23, a Prague-based blog about Belarus
Pavol Demes
- Director, Bratislava office of the German Marshall Fund
Andrew Miller
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Writer, The Economist
Covering the protests in Minsk
- Extra Credit Reading
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Neeka’s Backlog Frequently updated, a nerve center of live-blogged accounts from Minsk
Belarus Conversations, The Filter, collection of IM conversations with protesters in Minsk
04:45
In Kiev, there was a lot of money … there were a lot of business people in Ukraine who were dissatisfied with the state of government there, and invested a lot of money into changing the situation … whereas the opposition here have got a little sound system, which isn’t very loud, a few flags, and about a dozen or so pretty rickety tents. … Revolutions cost money.
Andrew Miller on Open Source
16:57
The fact is, every opinion poll before the election put Lukashenko’s popularity somewhere between fifty and sixty percent. No one ever said it was over eighty percent, and in no poll over the last five years has it been anywhere close to that figure either. In other words, there are some problems with that figure and I see it as largely fabricated. .. He’s broken the constitution so many times in order to stay in power, and every stage of this election had this kind of problem about it. People were threatened with being fired from their jobs, students were threatened with being expelled from the universities if they didn’t sign these sheets in favor of the President.
David Marples on Open Source
25:37
The most important thing is the political assassination, the political murders, that (it’s very very likely) were ordered by Mr. Lukashenko. … In our case, it’s really four or five people, at least, that Lukashenko probably ordered to kill. And, of course, political prisoners that were recognized as political prisoners by Amnesty International and by other organizations. There were at least a dozen people we can name who spent either several months or maybe years in jail.
Vlad on Open Source
29:01
Internet is still the free medium, it’s just been traditional media that’s totally, completely under his control. … Except … they blocked internet on Sunday, the day of the election, and they’ve blocked internet during previous elections. … All together, at this moment, estimates are about 120 to 150 people who were arrested … and among them there were bloggers. I personally know four people with blogs that are now in jail.
Vlad on Open Source
37:41
Especially after Georgia and Ukraine had these democratic changes through what we call ‘color revolutions,’ Putin and his administration started to be nervous that something is going on in his neighborhood, which may have spilled over … in other countries of post-Soviet territory, but also may have some consequences in political evolution … Belarus is very important economic partner for Russia. So, all in all, I think that there are political, economic, and security reasons. At the same time, I would stress also psychological ones, where Russia feels to be pushed too much by West and our agenda- what we call spreading of democracy, which is read by them as spreading spears of influence of US and western Europe.
Pavol Demes on Open Source
39:39
It does look like there will be a Russia Belarus referendum sometime in 2006, and both Putin and Lukashenko have high stakes in this union, even though they don’t actually see it the same way. Putin seems to see it as a means by which Russia will control Belarus and be a very powerful figure within this union. Lukashenko keeps insisting that it’s a union of equal partners, even though his economy … is only three percent the size of Russia’s economy. … In the long term, it’s likely to mean that Belarus will lose more and more control over its own independence and identity, but he has no other way to go, because he has virtually abandoned every other possible route. … Belarus without Russia- this government would not last for three months.
David Marples on Open Source
- Chris’s Post-Game Analysis
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Dostoevsky seemed to enter the conversation in my head at the end. It must have been something in Pavol Demes’ voice, and in his suggestion that the Russian soul was being torn between the Eurasian and Pan-Slavic dreams of old and the invitations to freedom and democracy coming from the West. I began to hear the Dostoevsky voice at the end of his second-greatest novel, Demons, arguing that Russia (in the turbulence of the 1860s) would heal itself by reclaiming a peculiarly Orthodox Christian and Slavic legacy–and by rejecting the “isms” of the West, including atheism, nihilism and socialism. Our guest from Alberta, David Marples, half confirmed my hunch when he observed after the program that Alexander Solzhenitsn would doubtless have voted for Lukashenko in Belarus if he’d had the chance. Russians in the Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsn mold, Marples said, are reformers and liberals to the point when, faced with the loss of Ukraine, they become reactionary nationalists. What they haven’t figured out yet, Marples said, is that they can embrace democracy, even join the EU, without losing their
BelorussianBelarusian — or Czech, or Slovakian — identity. I want to believe they can, and they will. But what would Dostoevsky say?
March 20th, 2006 at 11:07 pm
Brendan, that is one great tease you wrote up. And its revelations about its subject prove wrong at least one of my opinions on a different thread.
Belarus is the ideal retirement spot for our neocons.
March 21st, 2006 at 11:32 am
While traveling last year in Tatarstan, an autonomous republic in Russia, a Tatar friend characterized that republic’s economic relationship with Moscow as very much like that of Belarus. The implication was that these republics benefit from partnership with Russia by getting their goods (manufactured ones in Belarus; petroleum in Tatarstan) to world markets.
However, cultural forces might also have a role. The Tatars are ethnically and culturally distinct from Russians; this has fueled popular support for more autonomy from Russia. Belarusian culture has been largely subsumed into the Russian; it’s possible this will diminish any Belarusian impulse to get out from under Moscow’s thumb.
March 21st, 2006 at 12:18 pm
2 questions for SputnikLee:
1: why are Tatars sometimes (old school) also called Tartars?
2: (this is a bigger one) what role does the nearly invisible post-Soviet international web called the Commonwealth of Independent States play in the Belarus vs. the world saga?
March 21st, 2006 at 6:47 pm
Surprise, surprise, that lovable liquid we love so much plays a big part in this dynamic.
Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea! Who owns those adorable pipelines that run through Belarus?
I hope you will touch on the “Putin Doctrine� and how that affects the dynamic in the region. I’m new to this but the Putin doctrine has eerie similarities to the Bush doctrine.
March 21st, 2006 at 6:54 pm
Belarus is a Russian province. The pretence to independence doesn’t full anyone.
Putin is Czar there and in Moscovy.
March 21st, 2006 at 7:09 pm
My grandfather came from Minsk. Boy am I glad he did. He was a deserter from the Russo-Japanese war.
March 21st, 2006 at 7:43 pm
What’s the country’s ratio of ethnic Russians to ethnic Belarussians?
March 21st, 2006 at 7:48 pm
Good luck to Belarus. It sounds like a tough climb. Thanks for the show!
March 21st, 2006 at 7:57 pm
Is Putin’s plan to build back up in the Hong Kong, Signapore, Dubai model. A loose control on the market and a tight control over the people?
March 21st, 2006 at 8:14 pm
It was nice to hear the Dostoevsky refereces from Chris. I would love to know what Alexei, Dmitry, and Ivan would think of the present state of affairs.
Is their any great literature coming out of that region now?
March 21st, 2006 at 11:07 pm
Okay, let me get this straight.
We’re talking about a country under a paternalistic government drawn from a class of secular aristocrats who make policy without consulting their people, and guise it in ideology and propaganda.
Who under-educate their people while allowing just enough economic largess and progress to avert an increasingly surly public.
Whose use of elections is only the distasteful business of submitting the perpetuation of their rule to plebiscite.
Who manipulate the electorate with jingo and fear-mongering, and then manipulate the elections to ensure their triumph.
And Condi Rice has the nerve to excoriate Belarus???
March 22nd, 2006 at 12:16 am
I haver a hunch that ByeloRussia is what every country will become in our post nation age especially in Europe.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:53 am
Here is a good site to visit to find out what is happening in Belarus if you want to continue to follow the events taking place there.
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/-/world/eastern-central-europe/belarus/
March 22nd, 2006 at 5:48 am
Minsk is not Kiev. And Washington, D.C. is not is not Kiev either.
If anyone feels outrage about how the election was defrauded in Belarus, the media controlled, and the good people of that suffering nation hoodwinked should read, Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 election and Why They’ll Steal it Again, a well researched and documented expose by professor Mark Crispen Miller about how Bush/Rove/Cheney rigged the last election right here.
March 22nd, 2006 at 7:38 am
Right on cue David Weinstein! This administration, and thus the country insofar as foreign affairs goes, has no credibility, no meaningful power or influence left other than military and I do not know what of that- we have become totally ineffective. Their change has to come from within, just as ours must.
March 22nd, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Nice Post-Game Analysis Chris!
“Russians in the Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn mold, Marples said, are reformers and liberals to the point when, faced with the loss of Ukraine, they become reactionary nationalists.”
Wow, and you tell us that Marples believes that Solzhenitsyn would have voted for Lukashenko - that’s a startling statement. It inspired me to do some Solzhe searches and I found his famous Harvard Commencement speech from 1978
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html
It’s called “A world split apart” and much of it is prescient to today. I find the speech both insightful and befuddling. Most of all though, it reaffirms the divide between East and West perspectives.
An excerpt: “But the blindness of superiority continues in spite of all and upholds the belief that vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present day Western systems which in theory are the best and in practice the most attractive. There is this belief that all those other worlds are only being temporarily prevented by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity or incomprehension from taking the way of Western pluralistic democracy and from adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in this direction. However, it is a conception which developed out of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, out of the mistake of measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet’s development is quite different.â€?
Thanks Chris for sending me down this road - I also just ordered “Demonsâ€? from Amazon, I’m excited to read it - I LOVE Dostoevsky!
March 22nd, 2006 at 6:29 pm
[…] br23 blog sums up the fourth day of the protest in Minsk and links to a Radio Open Source talk show on Belarus, in which he took part yesterday. Veronica Kho […]
March 29th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
What nonsense… I wonder if Chris read “Demons” at all… In any case it’s hard to read from it the things that he says he found there. Maybe he read only the last pages, the ones nobody usually reads
And “second-greatest novel”, oh my… The book is basically a pamphlet against revolutionaries of Nechaev’s “goals-vindicate-the-means” type and to ridicule Tourgenev under the name of Karmazinoff. What about “Crime and Punishment”, “Brothers Karamazoff”, “Idiot”? Ever read those? I guess not.
And this guy David Marples, who is he exactly? What does he know about Russians and from where? I never met a Russian who wants “to control” Belarus, the general opinion is to let it go and not spend money (or other valuable resources) on it. I don’t meet people from Kremlin, etc., I’m talking about my friends who span the range from workers to intelligentsia. Solzhenitsyn isn’t representative of russian people in any meaningful way, at least not anymore. And I’ve searched through the russian internet and didn’t find a single place where names Solzhenitsyn and Lukashenko are put together in any meaningdul way, the same for words Solzhenitsyn and Belurus, etc. Go figure…
Vlad, “In our case, it’s really four OR five people, at least, that Lukashenko PROBABLY ordered to kill”, it seems you are not too certain, are you? That’s brainwashing by hearsay, my dear, it won’t wash with serious people… Go find the facts first, then talk on the radio. Colin Powell in miniature…
And this guy Pavol is simply amazing, his switching from “spreading democracy” language to “spheres of interest” one is just short of laughable. These are different discourses, my dear, and for different audiences, one for elites, another for hoi polloi, and they don’t mix. Study from Bush administration, determine your target audience, learn the message (talking points) and stay on message (parrot). Good luck!
March 29th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
Another interesting fact about Belarus that I haven’t heard in this broadcast, is that it lost 25% of its population in the WWII and recovered prewar numbers only in 1980s, if memory serves right. No need for a “nuclear catastrophe”, just European “civilisation”… And now this expert from German Marshall Fund wants more German involvement in Belarus politics, what an idiot.
April 21st, 2006 at 1:43 pm
test
April 21st, 2006 at 2:47 pm
Ok, here’s a meta-idea for a show. It’s quite current and it cuts to the heart of the Open Source mission statement, both as an approbation and a challenge.
There’s a new book out by Yale’s Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks. Among other things (that’s an understatement), it takes up the notion that the “MSM” no longer serves society’s information needs, if it ever did, and that the Internet is poised to pick up the torch through “social production.”
Indeed, in addition to Open Source, social production experiments are popping up like, well poppies. Here’s one of my personal favorites (the proprietor, Kent Bye, is also a great interview).
The book’s drawn blurbs from such blogospheric heavies as Siva Vaidhyanathan, Jack Balkin and Larry Lessig, and Crooked Timber says it “fizzes with ideas,” and it really does. It also practices what it preaches: it’s freely available and open for input.
After indulging myself in Benkler radiant optimism, I went looking for a cold bucket of water. I found a damning and brilliant indictment of the new Internet sociopolitical ideal by Berkeley’s Hubert Dreyfus. He deploys Kierkegaard’s unique critique of the Habermasian public sphere:
Ouch. I resemble that remark. I think it’s worth wrestling with.
August 8th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
[…] talk to. We try to get a blogger on every show, whether we’re talking about knitting or Belarus. Almost every picture on the site comes from the photo-sharing site […]
April 5th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
I happen to be born in Belarus, but now live and work in the US. I truly believe in the bright future of my homeland. Despite situation and difficult business environment, the economy is growing rapidly, with IT and real estate markets booming. In fact my company keeps more then half of all our employees in Belarus, contributing to the economy, paying taxes and hiring new employees in Minsk at the rate of 2-5 engineers per month.
>>Nikos
>> What’s the country’s ratio of ethnic Russians to ethnic Belarussians?
The ratio is approximately 60 to 40. Interesting enough, with two state languages, Belarussian and Russian, more then half of the population consider Russian language as their native, mostly due to a) the centralized Soviet education system which limited Belarussian language curriculum up until 1980s, and b) large number of immigrants relocated to Belarus from all over the Soviet Union after the second world war.
May 29th, 2007 at 9:01 am
[…] nties in Western Russia. May his soul rest in peace. […] *** On March 21, 2006, br23 was on Radio Open Source, talking about the recent presidential election, A […]